Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Rest for the Weary

At the end of the day, often near the start of the morning, after everything has been copied and mailed, distributed and hung, rehearsed and retrieved, returned and redone, written and rewritten, and there's no sound in the place, and nothing outside the window but a thousand distractions, I know that sleep should come easily. There is nothing else to do.

Reorganize an address book.Write everyone in the next city, and tell them I'll see them soon.Listen to all the new releases. Pray that my favorite band is still bringing it.Write a harmonica part for the last song.Hang more flyers on Music Row.

There is always something else to do. Synapses fire off like little, tireless guns. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

But when the boldest of aspirations makes itself known, and there's nothing left to do but write, after a day of selling and trading, after the club owners who look at your jeans first, after everyone either wants to be thirty or ten, after your old band's new album isn't what you thought it'd be, after there's everything to do but nothing allowing it to be done, after the water bill comes, and the static streams from the television, and the newspapers say fifty-thousand words of nothing in plain black-and-white, and the phone ain't ringing and the door ain't knocking and the tank's a quarter full, and there's nothing to do but sleep or go, but you can't do either--what do you write? Where do you begin?